Monday, October 12, 2009

More on Obama's Nobel

Warsh hints at, but does not explicitly say, that the decentralization of the awarding of the prizes to multiple organizations means that none of them take into account the effect of their own decisions on the prestige of the other awards. I'd say the Norwegians are pretty clearly not internatlizing these negative externalities.

In my view, a "hope and change" administration would have politely declined the award. In doing so, Obama still would have gotten credit for being chosen, would have silenced all the critics and would have shown some real seriousness. His advisors let him down here.